


emotions have their own laws of physics

by comatoseroses



Category: Psych
Genre: Multi, can be pre slash if you squint, i just love..... Them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 21:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20477987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comatoseroses/pseuds/comatoseroses
Summary: Shawn loves him the same way that he always has. With every cell in his body, every thought that pops into his head, everything that he has; crashing around without restraint, barely held together in an erratic orbit around the stable planet Burton Guster.Gus is home when home isn't home. Shawn takes leaps and Gus is there to land on.





	emotions have their own laws of physics

**Author's Note:**

> I put a lot of thought into developing this into a longer work. Including hypothetical plotty stuff and actually getting into the details/the whump. But I don't really have the energy to get into all that, and whether or not I'm up for writing out characters almost dying really depends on the day. So, here's this! 
> 
> Just some nice, basic aftermath of a very nearly-deadly-for-Gus murderer-Noodle-Incident, and me having a lot of emotions about how much these good boys care about each other. Because canon will never provide me with enough.

"I thought you'd be here sooner."

It's a quiet thing. Raspy, drowsy, a little bit of that medicated fog, barely audible over monitors and fuzzy TV infomercials and people going about their business in the halls. 

Shawn's been all momentum since he stepped into the room. The twitching of his fingers, the scuff of his cheap sneakers on the floor where he's been pacing. An increasingly painful counterpoint to all the unnatural stillness on the bed. 

That sentence is all it takes to bring his energy to a halt. Just a sad little puppet. All cut strings and nowhere to go. 

He stands by the window for a few seconds, seconds that feel like they stretch on for a few minutes, a chair half tipped back in his hands like an afterthought. Drinks in the semi-alert way he's being regarded like, like it's a storm in the desert. Filling up his senses. The whole nine yards. When he drags the chair over and drops into it, as close to the bed as he can physically manage, that momentum still doesn't come back. 

Gus frowns at him. Gus is worried, not-quite-alarmed-yet, starting to really feel his various aches and pains, and-- most importantly-- exhausted despite not wanting to be exhausted. Bone-deep tired, too weak to sit up by himself, too weak to hold his own cup of ice chips. Too tired to even pretend not to be as concerned as he is by Shawn's lack of… Shawn-ness. Too tired to pretend that he's not still scared. Can't do anything to disguise the way anxiety spikes, puts a bit of a kick in his heart rate over the monitors.

Fragile. Easy to lose. 

Shawn looks down at his knees, and then he looks back up. 

Gus is still frowning at him. 

Shawn tries to think of a stupid movie quote, or an old sitcom, or a fitting but slightly too insensitive this soon song lyric that he can use to smooth some of the lines from Gus's forehead, and he comes up empty. 

Instead he thinks of tiny baby birds who can get pushed out of their nest too early on accident. He thinks of how fast a big stick of cotton candy can melt into nothing in a sudden shower, or because someone pushed past him and knocked it into one of those kiddie pool games with the rubber ducks floating around in it. 

He thinks of _"I don't blame you, Shawn,"_ and how easy it was for someone to lure him in and force him to watch the one good thing he's always, _always_ had, no matter what, slowly fade away. How it's etched into his memory forever now, every agonizing detail, and he'll never be able to stop remembering every agonizing detail. And maybe he could ride out of town to push it back for a while, and maybe if he weren't here this never would have happened. Maybe if he left tonight, it would never happen to someone that he cares about again. 

He's not good at his maybes. He's not good at sincere and honest and emotional. Gus is better at that than he is. Gus is better than he is. Gus _deserves_ better than what Shawn's ever offered him. Right now, especially. Gus, who is opening his mouth to say something, deserves more than a crack about Molly Ringwald and a best friend who vanishes the second something awful happens to him. 

Shawn thinks that he's selfish for wanting to run and selfish for not being able to do it all at the same time. Shawn thinks, with some sting of genuine panic, that this is why he tries so hard not to be the one who does the thinking.

"I can't do this without you," he blurts out, preemptively cutting Gus off.

It's not graceful, it's not quiet or tender. It's desperate. Almost accusatory. It's painfully honest, more than anything. Shawn lets out a short breath, surprised with himself. He can't figure out if his mind is going a mile a minute or if it's completely blank. 

And Gus says, "Of course not." He isn't completely smiling, still sounds hoarse and strained, but he's smoothed out somehow. Like what Shawn said was anywhere near enough. Like it's a relief that Shawn is here at all, failing in all the ways that count the most. "I'm the one who pays the mortgage."

It's a joke. An out. A familiar line that Shawn can reach for if he wants, a nightlight of understanding custom-made to ward off a monster in the closet. 

It makes his eyes well up. He can feel his expression crumple. He reaches up and carefully grabs hold of Gus's forearm after a moment of floundering, trying to blink it back. Can't bring himself to meet Gus's eyes again yet.

It would be so easy to take that out. Dredge up some half-assed comment and lean on the foundation of normalcy-- to use it as a comfort, the way Gus means it. And if Gus were just doing it for himself, looking for a crutch to get through processing what happened, Shawn would do it in a heartbeat. But he's not, right now. So Shawn can't. He considers it and feels guilty for considering it. It's a non-starter.

"I mean… I mean it. I can't do this without you. Anything. And if something happened to you, I wouldn't… I don't think I'd come back from that. I wouldn't want to." 

And like he's popped open a can of emotional Pringles, now that he's started, he can't seem to make himself stop.

"I need you, and you're my best friend, and-- you have to _be there_, because you're bigger than gravity. The world doesn't work without you. And I love you. I love you so much, I can feel it fill up my mouth sometimes. You're like a mouthful of bees. I love you so much that if I got x-rays, my heart would probably be wearing the Ricola man costume and blowing that-- that really long weird horn on the side of a mountain."

"Labrophone."

Shawn makes some half-choking, half-huffing sound of amusement despite his best efforts. "When you're off these painkillers, you're gonna be embarrassed that you were making up nonsense words."

(He knows that it's a real word. Somehow he can't bear the matter-of-fact correction.)

"I'm not-"

"What is that, like a sousaphone for dogs? You dreamed up a little doggy marching band?"

"Shawn."

"No, let me just- that's not-- what I'm _trying_ to say is-" Gus's free hand lands over his. It's a little awkward because he has one of those finger monitors clipped on. Shawn does look up, then, and almost all the hard work he put into maintaining an equilibrium vanishes into the ether. 

Shawn loves him the same way that he always has. With every cell in his body, every thought that pops into his head, everything that he has; crashing around without restraint, barely held together in an erratic orbit around the stable planet Burton Guster. 

Gus is home when home isn't home. Shawn takes leaps and Gus is there to land on. 

(He realizes his face is already wet.)

"I can't do this without you," he repeats, and after the Ricola thing it feels flat, not even close to enough. It's all he has.

"I know, Shawn," Gus tells him, serious as anything.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this."

"You're lucky I'm too tired to pinch you. I don't wanna hear that."

"I know." He turns his hand over beneath Gus's, grips it with a caution he'll probably forget how to use by tomorrow. "That's why I said it when you were too tired to pinch me for it."

Gus huffs, eyelids already heavy, as close to a laugh as he can manage. Shawn considers the fact that there was no way he'd be able to leave the minute he stepped into this room. Considers the feeling of something settling a little just for getting to see Gus in motion. He couldn't take off if he wanted to.

Bigger than gravity, he thinks. Some inevitable thing.

"Shawn."

"Yeah, buddy." 

He's worried for a moment that Gus is gonna trot out the _I don't blame you_ again, make them both have to think about it and talk about it like grownups. 

But all Gus says is, "You're a mouthful of bees, too."

And if Shawn sniffs, wipes his face a few times once he's sure Gus is back out, he doesn't think anyone needs to know about it.


End file.
